Bahraini retail and commercial lender BMI Bank said it has won approval from the shareholders for its merger with the kingdom's leading Al Salam Bank Bahrain (ASBB).

The shareholder approved the deal at the BMI's extraordinary general meeting (EGM) following a similar approval by the shareholders of ASBB during its Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) last month.

The boards of directors of ASBB and BMI Bank had earlier announced their respective resolves to combine the businesses by the way of exchanging 11 ASBB shares for each BMI Bank share wherein ASBB would acquire 58.5 million BMI Bank shares of BD1 each and issue 643.8 million ASBB shares of 100 fils each.

Sheikh Khalid bin Mustahail Al Mashani, the chairman of BMI Bank said: "I am pleased to announce that our shareholders have given their approval on the proposed business combination with Al Salam Bank Bahrain which will result in the combined entity becoming the fourth largest commercial Bank in terms of assets and fourth largest in terms of equity within Bahrain."

"In addition to creating a larger and stronger financial institution, the combined entity would become an economically significant financial institution in the domestic market and position itself to expand regionally," he noted.

"We are now working alongside ASBB to complete the legal and regulatory formalities to combine the two businesses which will provide all our customers with a range of quality products and services creating genuine value for all our stakeholders," stated Sheikh Khalid.-TradeArabia News Service